This is hardly universal. Repairing an iPhone is a 2-3 week affair involving mailing it off and hoping I get it back. I do live in the US, just not in or near a major urban center.
Wow. I realize you have huge distances but in the town I was born (pop 40k, 100 mile drive to next town which is similar. Basically the same geography as Alaska or Canada in northern Sweden) there is at lest 4 or 5 places that fixes it while you wait. It's not a big town but phone repair shops are about as common as barbers. So if a town is big enough to get your hair cut you can fix a screen...
We are probably extreme in Sweden though.
We have one repair shop in town, and they can not work on the newer phones without voiding the warranties, and they can not get replacements directly from Apple. So, they generally refuse to work on Apple devices as a result. Our nearest Apple store is about 600ish miles away, in Seattle.
Android is another matter, and they're more than happy to work on those devices.
